Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 25, 2011 @07:04PM
from the that-seems-hard-to-believe dept.

retroworks writes "According to a story in Digitimes, Acer chairman JT Wang is predicting the end of 'tablet fever.' 'Commenting on tablet PC's impact on the notebook industry, [Acer chairman JT Wang] pointed out that tablet PC fever is already starting to cool down and consumers are also being attracted by notebooks again with Intel's Ultrabooks and Microsoft's Windows 8 the major attractions.' Back to the old model then... PC and laptop sales, driven by Windows upgrades?"

The continued popularity of the iPad (and decent success enjoyed by Asus and Samsung with their respective Android tablets) would tend to put the lie to this claim. Acer's own entry into the tablet race was by all accounts a bit crap, so this sounds like some serious sour grapes to me. Also, I haven't heard from anybody in the real world who's excited about these 'ultrabooks' ; they sound like a sad marketing scheme from Intel, along the lines of their old 'Viiv' branding.

People are going to buy what works for them. The over-40 crowd at my last company loved ipads for traveling. The fact that a cheaper laptop could do all the same things and much more was irrelevant. The ipad had their two killer apps. Email and surfing. And it's dead-simple. Press a button and it's on instantly. Press an icon and email's running. Press the first button again and it's off. No startup. No 30 second grind for Outlook to fire up and get its bearings. No shutdown. Don't even have to

I think you will end up seeing more tablets with the power of a pc. I'm talking units like Asus' eee slate 121. We are moving some of our sales reps to these as they provide a full computer while also allowing for more sleek presentations. Im personally waiting on the second gen as it will have an i5 v2 in it verses the current which is i5 v1

it took apple to show the world that tablets had to have a different GUI from desktop computer. MSFT has been making tablet based OS's for a decade directly, however only a couple of dedicated touch applications where ever created for it, with Office being one of the big one.

when apple shipped the ipad it included a stripped down(and broken depending on your view) version of their office applications. straight out of the box. The email client gui was re written to take advantage of touch interfaces, unlike outlook which is still the same(with a shiny new ribbon)

tablets may become more powerful, but the interface requires them to have simplier UI's. Just like cars engines might get more powerful but you still control it with pedals and a wheel.

We are entering computation age where raw power isn't needed. directed computation power is. for those like you stuck in the past you will struggle with this change.

While manufacturers that have failed to grow a userbase that lets them compete with Apple may wish for tablets to be a bubble, I feel they're ignoring a new segment.

I have never purchased an apple device, bar an old 5G ipod in the past. When I saw Jobs present the iPad I could immediately see the utility. It doesn't compete with my laptop or my desktop. I use it in places my laptop doesn't work well. Say on the sofa, or in the kitchen. I can grab it and look something up while walking around. I can take it when traveling and use it to read news, watch video and still get emails or even remote desktop / ssh if needed.

When HP liquidated their touchpad stock I grabbed one of those too. The iPad's app store is certainly a huge draw, but $100 is easily worthwhile for the web browser, video player and email. The trouble for the manufacturers who aren't Apple is that while $100-$200 is easily justifiable for that device, at the $400-500 price point folk want an iPad, mostly because of the Apps.

The touchpad doesn't have a Netflix client. I can't fathom why HP didn't just pay Netflix to develop it, as it would easily have helped drive sales. I'm pretty sure they could have partnered with Amazon too for video and music services. At the moment, every non-apple brand of tablet is a compromise, yet there's no discount on price to reflect this. As a result, their userbase remains small and the apps remain undeveloped.

Unless someone really tries to compete with Apple, either by offering a better product at the same price point, or a similar product at a discount, tablet sales will continue and only one manufacturer will benefit.

Netflix worked just fine through the browser on the TouchPad from what I've heard... Until the fire sale, when Netflix blocked it.

Hulu did this, not netflix. Netflix is silverlight based rather than flash which was never supported on the touchpad. Hulu worked natively in the webos browser and they pulled support for it. I guess their ads aren't enough and they won't let you use it unless they can monetize an app.

The touchpad doesn't have a Netflix client. I can't fathom why HP didn't just pay Netflix to develop it, as it would easily have helped drive sales. I'm pretty sure they could have partnered with Amazon too for video and music services. At the moment, every non-apple brand of tablet is a compromise, yet there's no discount on price to reflect this. As a result, their userbase remains small and the apps remain undeveloped.

Unless someone really tries to compete with Apple, either by offering a better product at the same price point, or a similar product at a discount, tablet sales will continue and only one manufacturer will benefit.

Just to continue your line of thought... perhaps Amazon is that competitor (I do think their current app-store is meh, and the Kindle isn't the answer, but they will learn). Also, Google's acquisition of Motorola may pretty much signal that Google is interested in the tablet space... for reals this time.

Wow, the stuff about handling different size screens *really* misses the point about tablets. Why waste all that screen real-estate by not providing additional functionality in your tablet app cf your phone app. That's why the photo, mail, epicurious and a gazillion and one other iPad apps are quite different (and better) than their iPhone counterparts. By providing smooth scaling, Android removes a significant pressure for developers to rework phone apps to take advantage of the tablet screen size.

Were I a significant shareholder of Acer, I would be calling for the replacement of JT Wang. His comments have consistently shown a disconnect from reality and that is not the sort of person one should want directing a corporation. Closing your eyes and pretending things are the way you want them to be rather than how they are isn't a sound business strategy.

I realize that he shouldn't be a cheerleader for the competition but he's gone beyond that and is well into the realm of ignoring facts that are clear to anyone paying even a cursory attention to the market.

I agree that tablets cannot replace computers. But ask yourself two questions:

Are people expecting them to replace computers?

How many people actually need computers?

Computers were wonderful for a while since they enabled rapid technological innovations and people wanted access to those innovations, but I think we're eventually going to see people ditch computers for devices that are more suited to their needs.

(Yes, I know that tablets are computers. But I would also suggest that a lot of people don't see them as computers.)

The Acer CEO is a dimwit who's talking smack because there's nothing else he can do to stem the tide of abject failure coming out of his factories. He is basically berating the customers for buying "hot" tablets, particularly the iPad, instead of buying the tried-and-true plastic Wintel units that Acer vomits up. His company bet big on low-margin netbooks and lost, and now he's betting on Intel "ultrabooks".

HP just bailed out of the entire PC business (echoing IBM's decision in 2004), and among the reasons was that the tablet effect is real [electronista.com].

The Acer CEO's effort is better focused on coming up with better products, not whining.

The Acer CEO is a dimwit who's talking smack because there's nothing else he can do to stem the tide of abject failure coming out of his factories

Acer sold off their factories years ago. They are going the Motorola route of just outsourcing everything and hoping their name alone will allow them continue to reap huge profits. Obviously as you pointed out, those hopes arent coming to fruition.

Heh, I think Acer's products are fine, they're just always late to the party. I bought one of their dual-core atom nettops for work, and it's actually pretty nice compared to some of the other small PCs I played with before it. It had good specs and nicely integrated packaging. But by the time it came out it was just sort of pointless now that the little cheaper special-purpose nettops like rokus or googletvs or boxee boxes are out. Sure, those devices are more limited in what they can do, but the few t

Before last weekend, I would say it's a fad and will eventually die out within a few years. Then I saw my grandfather using a iPad, that was eye opening. He's 90, been partial paralyzed for 15 years after a stroke so he can only use his left hand. He's never really use a computer and doesn't understand the concept of the Internet. My uncle had brought the iPad to show my cousin's white coat ceremony photos. After showing my grandfather how to open the Photo App (it's the sunflower icon), selecting which album he wanted to see (Graduation, Family Photos, etc.), moving the next picture by swiping your finger, and zooming in and out with pinching, under 5 minutes he was able to do all that and had a blast. I haven't seen him amazed by technology, ever. We've try to get him to use a computer, that didn't work.

There's something here in tablets, not as a computing platform. It's a communication medium for the other 5 billion unconnected humans. It should be a seamless experience with the absolutely the lowest learning curve possible.

I had a similar experience with my 74 year-old grandmother. Though she's not disabled, I'd never seen her excited for any piece of technology. My mother showed her the iPad and her eyes lit up; she couldn't wait to get one. I drove them both down to the only place that had them in stock to buy one that very day, I couldn't believe it. That was almost exactly a year ago today and she still uses her iPad very frequently - I'd say more than half of her emails to my mother end in "Sent from my iPad." She's since replaced her Dell desktop with an iMac and was so excited when she did the upgrade to Lion on her own (she feared doing any sort of upgrade on her Dell); it was great to see her excited about technology and keeping more in touch with family outside of California.

But that wasn't the point of the parent post: It's that this person was *not* tecnically literate. At all. But still managed to use the UI.For nerds like us, the limitations are redily apparent. But for a technically illiterate person? It'll be great until they decide to learn more and end up running into the limitations.

This is why there's two markets: iDevices, and everything else. Most heavy users of PCs probably couldn't go iPad only, yet people who have never used one probably could.

Talk about missing the point, which is that Apple's vision of a tablet device--the iPad--has played a meaningful role in expanding the scope of how we interact with computing technologies. It wasn't Microsoft's Tablet PC running on Acer's hardware that did it, despite having predated the iPad.

The history of computing is punctuated with numerous moments of redefinition, and no, Apple was not responsible for all of them, or even a majority of them. But it is undeniable that the ease of use and flexibility of the iPad has facilitated the use of computing technology in new contexts. They have found their way into hospitals and airplane cockpits. You KNOW you did something right when your product can be enjoyed by just about anyone from 3 to 100+. Not that these things were not possible or foreseeable by others, but it wasn't until the iPad that widespread adoption of a tablet device actually occurred.

And that's what matters--not who made or envisioned the technology first, but who actually put it in people's hands, and got them to use it. That's what Mr. JT Wang doesn't understand (or is unwilling to acknowledge).

Tablets were never going to sell like they were forever. We're approaching the point where most people who want them, already have them. That doesn't mean they were a fad or a bubble. Without looking at sales figures, I would guess that all major inventions, from the Model T to the microwave oven to the MP3 player have gone through a similar cycle. They will continue to sell as people upgrade or replace aging units, but not at the rate they once did. It's a huge win for Apple that they got in at the ground floor. All the "me too!" companies now have an uphill fight on their hands. The Acer CEO likely knows this, and so is declaring the grapes to be sour.

Just because you haven't found a personal need/use for a tablet, doesn't mean the millions who've bought them (iPads and the dozen or so Xooms and Galaxy's out there) haven't.
The CEO of Acer sounds like he's trying to make noise because Acer isn't in the competitive tablet business. In fact, nobody is in the competitive tablet business at this point, except Apple. And all signs point to it not slowing down anytime soon.

My Xoom is nearly indispensable now that I have come to rely on it. I work in the medical industry and to be able to carry 90% of the functionality of a laptop with better battery life and a smaller form factor is just incredibly useful.

If your Xoom was double the thickness, double the weight, and double the price, would it compare favourably to the current Xoom? The Acer CEO's remarks are amusing because the tablet PC never had a bubble to burst. They were always a tiny niche market that never went anywhere, until real tablets like the iPad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab, etc. came along.

There is another tablet market and that is of course the eReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book_reader [wikipedia.org] market. Basically the tablet is a content consumption device, with a teensy bit of interactivity and form filling thrown in.

Acer doesn't want to get into the content distribution market, and Amazon's Kindle is just crap in comparison.

So Acer is likely right, the tablet PC market has passed it fad moment and the big fight will be on for a more functional and colourful table eReader, subsidised by content distribution. Now the real question is will the major content distribution empires jump into the fray, a free fully featured tablet with a two year subscription contract to their whole media empire, including archived content. They have got the content and they can tell Apple et al to go jump and basically distribute direct.

So Acer is likely right, the tablet PC market has passed it fad moment and the big fight will be on for a more functional and colourful table eReader, subsidised by content distribution.

I doubt that many people want a 'more functional ereader'; color perhaps, but I suspect what most people want in an ereader is something cheap that they can read anywhere which they only have to recharge every few weeks. The Kindle does that with its e-ink screen, while no LCD-based tablet can come close because the screens don't work well in sunlight and they require recharging after a few hours of use.

They have got the content and they can tell Apple et al to go jump and basically distribute direct.

At which point, the cash-rich Apple will buy out huge chunks of their industry (Apple could buy Comcast, Time Warner, Disney, or the entire music industry with the cash they have now), leaving big content with disastrously incomplete catalogues.

It any case, I think you're wrong in your assumption that tablets are or will remain content-consuption devices only. I think phones and tablets will soon be most people's main computer. They will dock them with big screens and keyboards when they want to work on something that requires it.

There always has been a market for tablets only they used to be called pda's or pocket pc's

Smart phones have pretty much replaced the older style pda, with tablets catering for those who need a bigger screen.

I think 10" screens are a little too big to be easily portable, a 7 inch screen size is still pocketable for many people especially good for men in white coats who have a suitable sized pocket. The 7inch screen is big enough for reading slashdot where the phone screen is awful.

My Xoom is nearly indispensable now that I have come to rely on it. I work in the medical industry and to be able to carry 90% of the functionality of a laptop with better battery life and a smaller form factor is just incredibly useful.

Lawyers are another demographic I have seen tablets gaining massive ground in. Phones have to be shut off in the courtroom, and have a nasty habit of blaring noise at random moments if they're still on... whereas a tablet with a data-only cellular connection doesn't have this issue, and is usually excused from the "no cellphones" rule because it doesn't look like a phone.

The no phone rule is meant to protect the privacy of the court (avoiding annoying ringtones is just a pleasant side effect). It's the same reason you're not allowed a video camera in court. A tablet might not have a phone connection but it could certainly be used as a recording device, I would have thought that sufficient to ban them. Oh, unless I guess you're in the US, in which case there is no privacy or sanctity in your televised courtrooms - in which case it's just a dick move, a rule that says all phones must be set to silent would be just as effective as one that said no phones allowed.

We have been pretty close for a while now. Latest Eee PC 10 inch netbook I bought as a gift for my mother runs for slightly less then 8 hours on a single charge (battery can be replaced in ~10 seconds), while running all x86 applications (atom n550). My only qualm with it is lack of XP (it had w7 starter), but after I upgraded the RAM size to 2GB it seemed to work really well. It's about the same size as 10 inch tablets in all dimensions but thickness (thin on the user's side, but thickens toward the screen where battery is) and about twice as heavy (1.25kg).

Of course it comes with actual x86 native compatibility, standard laptop connectivity, keyboard, touchpad, etc. It even has built in bluetooth so it can be used as a smartphone remote or to connect wireless speakers/headset.

It also costs about half of what ipad does. I honestly have no idea who would pick a tablet over netbook if ultraportable is what they need, unless it's a public image issue (which is what most people I've seen with tablets seem to be getting them for).

I'm afraid you really are stuck in your box. Take a tablet (my colleague used an iPad, but a Xoom would have worked just as well) - take a photo of a condition on a building site, then use a stylus to sketch a new assembly that needed to be added to a component, then email it back to the office for preliminary drafting.

I much (MUCH) prefer reading on my tablet to reading on a laptop. I can also scan all of my music scores (I sing in a chorus) and load them up in a PDF reader - then use the tablet to bring

My Tab10.1 is just a severely under-powered laptop/tablet-pc. In very short order we'll have 10hour batteries and 1.5 pound weight in an x86 machine just like we have with tablets. And then everyone will just go back to using full computers again.

When that happens Apple will just load OSX with all the iPad-like features they are putting in there now and tell app developers to flip a switch to make their apps a universal ARM/x86 binary. That's the advantage they have from keeping tight control over how the API is used. They have explored different scenari's to cover this from a tablet that slides into a pc-like docking enclosure [macdailynews.com], to an iMac that switches between touch and normal modes [dailymail.co.uk]. The tablet will evolve.

But for the money, $50 or $100 more buys you a crappy laptop that's still 10 times better than the netbook, includes an optical drive, and usually more memory and disk space, and certainly more computing power.

Many of us netbook owners bought them because they're small and light and decently powerful and have a usable keyboard and we can just throw them in a bag without worrying about the extra weight or worrying too much about the replacement cost if we lose it.

And the build quality of my EeePC is vastly superior to any cheap laptop I've used. Heck, it feels more robust than my Toshiba, which cost three times as much and it's certainly lasted better than the Acer laptop I used to have.

Count me as one of the people who has an Android 3.1 tablet and who occasionally uses it for Web browsing, but not much more. The Android browser renders a lot of pages in funky ways, the keyboard is pretty slow and so is the processing a lot of times, especially on JavaScript-heavy pages like Slashdot or Facebook. The keyboard layout is annoying, too, and I have to toggle in and out of various modes to type numbers, basic punctuation symbols, etc. So while it's basically OK for reading, it's annoying if I'

I might be biased a bit, but everything you've pointed out that doesn't work on your tablet works fine on my iPad. Even movie streaming, which I can do with it propped up on the treadmill's magazine stand at the gym (try to get a netbook to do that). If you're comfortable buying an Apple product, you might try switching and see if it makes you happier.

Disclaimer: I'm an Apple shareholder and I want you to fall in love with Apple products so I can retire earlier.

WHY are there apps for this crap? Why can't you access The Economist through a specially formatted web page? Why can't you access it through a generic eBook format? Why can't you access Netflix through HTML5?

Do you really want to know why? It's because HTML sucks for a user interface. It always has.

No, really. Back in the day, we had fat clients that did specific things; they did them fast, and the did them well. Then came the web as user interface... and quite frankly, it has sucked donkey balls for most of it.

Oh, sure, it's gotten better. But, really, the difference between a native app and a web application has always been miles. A native app is faster, cleaner, and generally does things you can't really do in a web page.

And, yes, I'm sure HTML 5 is wonderful and likely even makes toast for me. But, it's largely a moving target: and a well designed, native application will pretty much always give you a better piece of software to interact with simply because the GUI works differently. It also has the added benefit of being something I can run when I am disconnected from the network.

An app isn't a marketing gimmick... back in the day, we used to call it 'software'. The world as a web page? Now there's something which has made for more crappy (and slow) software than you can think of.

The world as a web page? Now there's something which has made for more crappy (and slow) software than you can think of.

I used to hate trying to make interactive web pages when browser cross-compatibility was a complete nightmare, but these days it isn't so bad. I like that the in-house web apps I've made here work on any computer or device, and so do the users. Web apps are doing what Java should have been doing for us years ago - allowing people to use any OS they want. I think it's an important step for breaking free of the Windows monopoly.

There's no doubt that native apps are more efficient and capable, but I'm happy wi

The perfect vector for piracy is DVDs and Bluray, which are fantastic quality, and have been cracked for years. Meanwhile HTML5 streaming is inherently low bitrate and low quality, plus depending on the source, the quality may auto-scale based off network throughput. Besides, PlayOn has already breached whatever security Netflix has, and retransmits the video over DRM-free UPNP.

DRM was never intended to prevent piracy. If it were, it's clearly an abysmal failure, and they would have given up on it a deca

I think it's silly to compare your PC with a tablet. It's a little like me saying your pickup truck will smoke my Miata. They have a lot of similarities and can do a lot of the same kinds of things, but they were built for entirely different uses in mind. Your truck is what you need and I couldn't be happier in my Miata. It turns out though, that not many people need a truck.

I think a lot of computer people don't understand the iPad and are worried about what it is doing to the PC industry. It really is disrupting the PC business in unbelievable ways (and is a big part of what has HP looking to dump their PC business). There are a lot of people out there who got a computer to get on the internet and they really aren't all that happy with it. Those people are being attracted in droves to the iPad. For these people, the iPad isn't the accessory, the PC is. They only need it for iTunes right now and soon that won't be an issue any more.

As a programmer, I see the iPad as a huge opportunity. For whatever reason, people who have them are purchasing software for them. Much more than they ever did with their PC. People use these things all the time online and off. It's the best thing to happen to this industry in a long time.

I'm so impressed at how well Apple is executing lately that I've reversed my opinion on their stock price. When the stories about them becoming the most valuable company by market cap started surfacing I thought that was a great signal for people to dump Apple stock. It's ridiculous, right? Now I'm not so sure. They own the market for desktop and laptop computers that cost more than $1k. Now they are totally screwing up the low end of the computer market for everybody with the iPad. What they've done to the music and phone business, I believe they are about to repeat with other home electronics (like an Apple television). There's a very real chance that Apple is just getting started.

I never thought about the background apps draining the battery. Do you know why iOS doesn't seem to have the same problem? My wife has an iPhone and iPad and both of those devices have much better battery life than my Nexus. I always assumed it was due to hardware (ie the larger, "permanent" batteries). Never thought much about the software because I assumed they were working in similar ways.

I have an iPad, and I use mine almost every day. In the past week I've been streaming Merlin episodes off Netflix, reading Sherlock Holmes off iBooks/Kindle, I use it to check my calendar/email before going to bed. I plug a noise-canceling headset in and watch movies on it on the plane (I've had to travel a dozen times this year, so >25 flights), which is nice in coach because laptops are too bulky really (especially if the guy in front leans back). Plus it's a really convenient way to check/offline read documents, which I can drop in dropbox, sync over to the ipad without a wire, and then read (on the plane, in the hotel bed, etc). (Also, Angry Birds HD, go.)

Honestly, I called it a gimmick when it first came out. A week or two after launch, I happened to swing by an Apple store, we played with one, we decided to get it. Now we have 3 in the family (one each), and all 3 of us use it regularly.

Granted, to me, about 50% of the utility is the video - Netflix + iTunes shows/movies (I don't pirate, but I also don't pay for cable, so I supplement netflix with an occasional itunes purchase).

If you travel a lot, that's great... but it is just a gimmick for most people. I honestly don't see the point in watching a movie on a smartphone, pad, or even a computer without a giant monitor and great surround sound... sure, if I'm stuck on a plane it's one thing, but if I'm at home it makes no sense. I can't use it when I commute or when I'm sleeping... 90% of the rest of the time I'm either at home with access to my PC or at work. Even when I go out... honestly, as a computing professional, the last thing I need in a bar while playing pool is another computer.

So it's reasonable to see that there are certainly people who can get a lot out of them, but for most people all they get is a "wow" factor, especially if you've already got a smart phone.

I have an Acer Iconia 500 and this is not the case. Same on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v.

so is the processing a lot of times, especially on JavaScript-heavy pages like Slashdot or Facebook.

If you think Android is bad, you should see how IOS chokes on./ and FB. Lets not get to media heavy sites like AFL.com.au. There's a reasons people create new sites for IOS yet dont for Android. My bank has had to produce an IOS application for IOS users yet the mobile and normal sites are li

The CEO of Acer sounds like he's trying to make noise because Acer isn't in the competitive tablet business.

Actually, Acer has sold tablets than any other Android tablet maker, and they had features that Xoom STILL can't get working (MicroSD card writing) [androidcentral.com]. Everything on the acer worked out of the box, and they had sold a million of them before the other Android Tablet guys got to market.

Sure, the year's head start that Apple had means they are still at the top of the total sales chart.

Acer also sells ChromeBooks and regular laptops, and I suggest the CEO is probably in a pretty good position to measure sales tre

The misunderstanding here is that people have to choose one or the other. I prefer a desktop for programming, a laptop for browsing leisurely about the apartment, and a tablet for reading in bed. Once the price bubble on tablets bursts, I am sure more people will buy them as a handy tertiary device, between a phone and a laptop.

I prefer a desktop for programming, a laptop for browsing leisurely about the apartment, and a tablet for reading in bed.A tablet is any good only for mindlessly consuming. The moment you want to write more than a few words or do more than a couple clicks, it fails horribly.

I'm in love with N900, albeit I did need to customize it a lot as Nokia's software is really not up to scratch. With a general purpose OS, it removed any need I had for laptops: at home and at work, I have desktops with comfortable keyboards and big monitors. Anywhere on the go, I have a portable device -- one that, unlike laptops and big tablets, fits into a pocket, and unlike tablets it has a decent input dev.

I don't think putting anything in the niche between makes sense. You can at most have something portable, something luggable and something for heavy-duty work. An additional device that is "easily luggable" seems totally superfluous to me.

What you say is true, if you view the tablets as a pc without a keyword and mouse. However if you view the items as an entertainment device, you'll see there is a very active market for them with consumers. This is where the so called bubble is. However i think the issue is more that the devices are nearing saturation point and this will have a serious impact on the sales of future devices.

There is only "apple fever" and it is not going to cool down any time soon.

The only thing that will cool that down is tightening credit, which in the US is not likely to happen without destroying the US dollar first. Only then will mommy and daddy stop buying iPads and iPhones for their spoiled children. Or will spoiled grown ups who were once spoiled children stop overindulging on these little, shiny but expensive toys.

Stop being a grumpy old turd and go TRY ONE for a while. Honestly, I am 30X more productive than the guys at work that dont have one. I carry autocad files with me to review and show. I annotate pdf files etc...

It's a tool, just because you cant figure out how to use a wrench does not make wrenches stupid.

I don't think it has anything to do with that, plenty of people have found uses for tablets. I think it has more to do with the fact that they're reaching market saturation at their current price points. They're still just a little too expensive for the mainstream to really start getting into them. Wait until they're priced like the HP fire sale tablet and you will see them exploding into use, and as more people have them there will be more development, functionality added in....just like with any platform, whether hardware or software.

Once it gets to the point where people are throwing old tablets in drawers like they do with their old MP3 players and cell phones, I'll say yeah, the fever has passed.

Always the same ridiculous assertions from people who don't understand how useful tablets are and can be. The idea that there's no reason to buy a tablet except because I want to be trendy is just absurd. I've completely replaced my laptop for all mobile computing with an iPad. I write emails, read books, do work, make money, travel and consume entertainment on it. My laptop has left my desk maybe twice in the last year and a bit (since the iPad 1 was released). There's no Apple fever. There's a desire to get away from devices that aren't suited to the task at hand (which the laptop is for most of my mobile computing needs). If I want or need a keyboard I can keep a bluetooth keyboard around or get an eePad Transformer which is a rather nice device because it's the best of both worlds (though I still find Android to be a very confusing and clunky OS). For 9%% of my mobile computing needs I don't need an attached keyboard. In fact a keyboard is an active hindrance. Have you ever tried to read something in portrait mode on a laptop? Have you ever tried to scrub through a quicktime movie while holding a laptop with one hand on a busy film set? Yeah. No thanks. I'll take the tablet.

Nobody's been able to compete with Apple in this domain yet (though I'm certain in a few years they will manage it) so they're crying sour grapes and declaring the market dead. Uh huh. Riiiight.

Exactly, no scope for the imagination.The medical field has needed this type of tech for eons and now it is here in a form that is quite functional.It is fantastic for entertainment functions.It is fantastic for educational functions.

Each day I hear of people using these devices in new ways... ways a computer simply can't do.

What's neat is that you've found a great use for the device even without a lot of the things that make it really uniquely different from desktops and laptops. Personally, I think of tablets as an incredibly social computer. Look how many people easily pass around iPads, or will hold one and poke at it while another person is standing or sitting right there. And with the screen, there's no question of weird viewing angles, unlike many laptops, so it actually feels like a shared experience.

Tablets have its own attractive. Touchscreens, aware of how you move, or where are you, easy to hold and use. But being keyboardless is a big disadvantage. I still don't understand why the netvertibles didnt take off. Something that could be used as tablet or as notebook should have been the best of both worlds.

I don't know, they have their uses, even without an effective data input mechanism. Certainly not as a replacement to a laptop though. It would take some kind of direct mind interface for input to make them really work, and at that point we probably can lose the screen too.

I know a CEO like this. He had to have a Macbook Pro and a Macbook Air and now he wants all the sales people to have iPad's because nothing else is acceptable except the device with the most elit image even if it is significantly harder to manage and for the users to operate for there tasks.

I know a CEO like this. He had to have a Macbook Pro and a Macbook Air and now he wants all the sales people to have iPad's because nothing else is acceptable except the device with the most elit image even if it is significantly harder to manage and for the users to operate for there tasks.

Sure, and we all have stories about Stupid CEO tricks. In fact, I believe there is a long running comic with that as it's primary gag line. But that isn't the only reason that iPads are popular. They are popular primarily because THEY ARE NOT LIKE THE COMPUTER YOU FIRST PROGRAMMED IN 6TH GRADE BY CANDLELIGHT WHILE HIKING BAREFOOT UPHILL IN THE DARK. I'm constantly amazed at the angst this device has created amongst the Slashdoterati. You all sound very threatened about a 1 pound device that, according to the hive mind here, can't process it's way out of a recycled paper bag.

Calm down, switch to decaf or something. Take a walk. It's something different, an 'uncomputer', an appliance. It doesn't fortell the end of the universe, it isn't George Orwell's worst nightmare.

I'm a grizzled old neck-bearded software and science guy who is so old he actually used punch cards in a production environment (until we switched to 8-inch floppies!) and I think the iPad is a peach of a device.

2. I was part of the Apple faithful for years, but got screwed over royally on a Pismo laptop that I paid $2,200 for back in 2000 that Apple refused to fix/replace. Apart from a couple 2nd gen iPod Nanos I bought my wife and son 5 years ago, I've been very leery of purchasing from them again. Maybe that's unfair, but hell, it's my money.

Assuming you can afford to buy both a notebook and a tablet, you're right, they aren't competitors. But once you have to decide to buy one or the other, for most people the notebook is winner. If tablets can come down to netbook prices (I saw one for $179 today) then maybe the question of affording both will disappear. However, the decent tablets aren't anywhere close to that price yet. Most of them are $400+. For that you could buy a very capable notebook. For the cost of a tablet and a minimal noteboo

Sorry, but a TABLET PC market has existed cince 1996. Fujitsu has been the KING of Tablet PC's for decades. in fact most hosptials have Fuj itsu Stylistics all ove rthe place.

Sounds like you not only do not know what you are talking about, bot know nothing at all about Computing at all. the iPad is a dirt cheap iteration of what a lot of companies and professionals have been using for well over 20 years now.

Professional tablets have been around for decades... where have you been?

Dauphin DTR-1 was the very first, and was widely used in 1993 for mostly the FBI and insurance industry, doctors started using it.Fujitsu Stylistic is the absolute standard and has been for over 20 years now.Lenovo is so late to the party, they are pretty much a joke.

I was at a conference a few months ago and saw a woman using an iPad to edit a document using the on-screen keyboard, and I'd wager she was doing about 35wpm. Not spectacular, as she obviously knew how to type, but still, not too bad. I suspect, like anything, it just takes getting used to. It certainly meant she had a smaller, more self-contained device to take notes with than someone with a notebook, or shudder, a netbook/subnotebook.